Dieting & Muscle Atrophy

Atrophy, or muscle wasting, can result from a poor dietary plan. Both excessive cutting of calories or limiting your protein intake can result in the loss of lean muscle tissue. While you will lose weight, you will also lose strength and your metabolism will slow down. Dieting should leave you healthier, not weaker. Consult a health-care professional before beginning any diet or exercise program.

Atrophy

Atrophy literally means wasting, and when you lose lean muscle mass, you lose more than just strength. Muscle burns calories at rest, so the more muscle you lose, the more your metabolism will slow. A decrease in your basal metabolic rate over time makes it more difficult for you to lose body fat. To avoid this, you must get enough protein and avoid extreme caloric deficits. Failing to do so can undermine your dietary efforts.

Protein

You require protein for tissue modeling and repair, as well as for muscle maintenance. Your protein needs increase if you are exercising, so if you begin an exercise program and cut your protein intake, you are working at cross-purposes. A 2009 study published in "The Physician and Sportsmedicine" showed that people engaged in regular exercise needed far more protein than sedentary individuals. If you exercise intensely, you may need between 1.4 g to 2 g of protein per kg of body weight per day. Get most of your protein from whole foods such as lean cuts of beef, oily fish and chicken. Milk and eggs are good sources of protein, and if you follow a vegan lifestyle, soy is a protein high in many essential amino acids.

Calories

Excessive calorie cutting presents numerous problems if you wish to long-term diet. Very low-calorie diets cause muscle wasting and depress your metabolism. Very low-calorie depress your hormone function, which makes it even harder to burn fat and maintain lean muscle mass. A 1991 study published in the "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" showed that patients following a very low-calorie diet lost lean body mass and experienced a decrease in metabolic rate after only three days. Then, 21 days after the start of the diet, participants experienced an 18 percent decrease in metabolism and lean body mass, on average.

Hormones

One of the methods by which your metabolism slows following a low-calorie diet is by decreasing your output of thyroid hormone. A 1990 study published in "Hormone and Metabolic Research" showed that study participants who undertook a very low-calorie diet all experienced a significant drop in thyroid hormone levels. It was concluded that this drop was responsible for the drop in resting metabolic rate. Thyroid hormone is responsible for maintaining your metabolism and burning fat, and the more your thyroid output drops, the less fat you burn.